Word of the Week 02/16/20: Dudgeon

From Merriam-Webster:

A fit or state of indignation —often used in the phrase in high dudgeon

Offense, Resentment, Umbrage, Pique, Dudgeon, Huff mean an emotional response to or an emotional state resulting from a slight or indignity. Offense implies hurt displeasure. Resentment suggests lasting indignation or ill will. Umbrage may suggest hurt pride, resentment, or suspicion of another's motives. Pique applies to a transient feeling of wounded vanity. Dudgeon suggests an angry fit of indignation. Huff implies a peevish short-lived spell of anger usually at a petty cause.

Middle English dogeon, from Anglo-French digeon, dogeon

From Wiktionary:

Origin uncertain; perhaps from Welsh dygen (“anger, grudge”)

From Grammarphobia.com:

Dudgeon originally meant the handle of a dagger. Some word detectives have tried to link dudgeon with dygen, a Welsh word that means malice or resentment, but the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t see a connection. The most likely theory is that the expression “in high dudgeon” originally had something to do with grabbing a dagger in anger. Interestingly, two similar-sounding words, bludgeon and curmudgeon, are also etymological mysteries. The word first showed up in the 15th century in the sense of the wood used to make the handle of a knife or dagger. Later, it came to mean the hilt or handle itself.

Shakespeare has Macbeth use the word in reference to the hilt of a dagger: “I see thee still, / And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, / Which was not so before,” but decades before Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in the early 1600s, dudgeon was being used to mean a feeling of anger or resentment.

The first citation in the OED for dudgeon used in this sense is from a 1573 entry in  The Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey: “Who seem’d to take it in marvelus great duggin.” (Harvey was an English writer and his book contained a collection of draft letters.)

The first OED example of “high” and “dudgeon” linked together are in Hudibras (1663), a mock heroic poem by Samuel Butler: “When civil dudgeon first grew high, / And men fell out they knew not why; / When hard words, jealousies, and fears, / Set folks together by the ears.” (The author of the poem was a 17th-century poet and satirist, not the better-known Victorian novelist of the same name.)

The OED’s first citation for the most common use of dudgeon today is from an 1885 issue of the Manchester Examiner: “[He] resigned his position as reporter of the Committee in high dudgeon.”